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Weblog of a University of Kansas ecology and evolutionary biology student, fighting for progressive politics, evolution, and endangered species.
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| Address URL | http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/ Registered: 31-Mar-2008 |
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 Send to email | Movie Review: Expelled in Creationism |  By Thoughts
el 29-Apr-2008 | Expelled is a really, truly, awful movie. Even setting aside its errors and its Holocaust nigh-denial, it's just a badly assembled bit of cinema. It's offensive and absurd to compare the events of the Cold War to the treatment of the supposed martyrs: the folks who variously were called bad names, didn't get tenure because they didn't publish research or get grants, the one who didn't get a new contract after failing to live up to the previous one, etc. People starved behind the Berlin Wall. They were sent to Siberia, and not in any figurative sense.
It's doubly offensive for Stein to set himself up as some sort of Cold Warrior. Ben Stein isn't Reagan. He isn't Nixon. He isn't Thatcher. He's not even George Herbert Walker Bush. The movie is just self-aggrandizement on his part. If there were even a glimmer of self-awareness, a touch of self-mockery at some point along the tedious, petty and entirely trivial course of the movie, it might have been salvageable. But there isn't. All it has are poorly edited footage that appears to have been shot by an eight-year old with ADD. Whether the cinematographer even had a tripod is unclear, and he or she surely didn't have a light meter, or any means to focus the camera consistently.
The Holocaust sections of the movie aren't just deeply, deeply offensive, they are also bizarrely disconnected from the rest of the movie. For a while, the director tries to put together a fake film-within-a-film, but it was poorly executed, overly long for its conceit, and never really wrapped up. Its like the director just lost interest in the idea. If that scheme were to run through the whole movie, it shouldn't start half an hour in, and the film should maintain that light-hearted, satirical feel. But it doesn't, and it carries on too long for it just to be a brief bit. When the conceit of the film-within-a-film recurs, it takes too long to remember what's going on. It's a gag that could have been funny, had the director, actor or writer possessed any comedic talent at all.
Don't waste your time. Rent Mr. Death: The Rise & Fall of Fred A. Leuchter Jr. if you want a look at the way technical expertise can mislead, the way science can be misused, and the way a basically decent person can be dragged into Holocaust denial. Then reflect on the far less honorable path taken by Ben Stein and his new friends at the Disco. Inst. Read the comments on this post...
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 | Thoughts From Kansas |  Blogger | Weblog of a University of Kansas ecology and evolutionary biology student, fighting for progressive politics, evolution, and endangered species.
Thoughts from Kansas You will notice that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that |
| Expelled | | I haven't written a lot here about Expelled: No Intelligence. It'll be a crappy movie, and all the PR in the world won't change that. All the whining about PZ Myers, and criticism of his desire to see the movie he's featured in won't make the movie any better. Plus, I'm helping develop NCSE's response to Expelled, and I don't want to tip our hand.
That said, I will predict t [..] Read complete article | | Published 31-Mar-2008 by Thoughts in Creationism
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| Thoughts From Kansas | Blogger | Weblog of a University of Kansas ecology and evolutionary biology student, fighting for progressive politics, evolution, and endangered species.
Thoughts from Kansas You will notice that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that |
| Movie Review: Expelled | | Expelled is a really, truly, awful movie. Even setting aside its errors and its Holocaust nigh-denial, it's just a badly assembled bit of cinema. It's offensive and absurd to compare the events of the Cold War to the treatment of the supposed martyrs: the folks who variously were called bad names, didn't get tenure because they didn't publish research or get grants, the one who didn' [..] Read complete article | | Published 29-Apr-2008 by Thoughts in Creationism
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| Thoughts From Kansas | Blogger | Weblog of a University of Kansas ecology and evolutionary biology student, fighting for progressive politics, evolution, and endangered species.
Thoughts from Kansas You will notice that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that |
| More Expelled reviews | | Someone at the same screening of Expelled: No Intelligence that PZ Myers was tossed out of has two very contradictory things to say about the movie:
the entire audience, minus Dawkins’ posse, agreed that that the film’s main point was that Intelligent Design should be taught in conjunction with Evolution.And also:
In fact, Naz [..] Read complete article | | Published 21-Mar-2008 by Thoughts in Creationism
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| Thoughts From Kansas | Blogger | Weblog of a University of Kansas ecology and evolutionary biology student, fighting for progressive politics, evolution, and endangered species.
Thoughts from Kansas You will notice that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that |
| Happy Earth Day |  I'm still digging out of the post-Expelled craziness. Our video about Chris Comer has gotten more views than the Expelled trailer on Youtube or the rapping Dawkins video, and traffic keeps streaming in to ExpelledExposed.com.
If you haven't done so already, there's still time to locate a stupid statement by Ben Stein (from anywhere, not the movie) and refute it as part of NCSE [..] Read complete article | | Published 22-Apr-2008 by Thoughts in Creationism
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| Thoughts From Kansas | Blogger | Weblog of a University of Kansas ecology and evolutionary biology student, fighting for progressive politics, evolution, and endangered species.
Thoughts from Kansas You will notice that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that |
| Ben Stein: Still a rat-bastard | | As Ben Stein's egregiously bad Expelled opens in Canada, the Canadian press is getting a taste of the offensive bile Stein unleashed in his US media tour. Peter McKnight, of the Vancouver Sun, asked Stein about the ADL's condemnation of his movie:
Nowhere does Stein mention the centuries of anti-Semitism before Darwin -- in fact, Expelled all but ignores anti-Semitis [..] Read complete article | | Published 24-Jun-2008 by Thoughts in Creationism
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| Thoughts From Kansas | Blogger | Weblog of a University of Kansas ecology and evolutionary biology student, fighting for progressive politics, evolution, and endangered species.
Thoughts from Kansas You will notice that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that |
| Too stupid for words | | If you make a movie that falsely claims there's a massive conspiracy to expel dissenting voices, it's probably unwise to then expel dissenting voices.
And if you are going to pass photographs around to security guards and instruct them that certain people are threats to your movie, and must be expelled, you might as well have the guards be on the lookout not only for PZ Myers, an inno [..] Read complete article | | Published 21-Mar-2008 by Thoughts in Creationism
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| Thoughts From Kansas | Blogger | Weblog of a University of Kansas ecology and evolutionary biology student, fighting for progressive politics, evolution, and endangered species.
Thoughts from Kansas You will notice that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that |
| Ken Miller: Expelled from Expelled for his religious views | | The more that the producers of Expelled talk, the more they demonstrate their abject idiocy. Chris Heard transcribes part of producer Mark Mathis's discussion with Scientific American:
[SciAm editor] Mirsky: Why not also include comments from somebody like Ken Miller—
Mathis: Uh—
Mirsky: who is famously religious—
Mathis: well— [Laug [..] Read complete article | | Published 10-Apr-2008 by Thoughts in Culture Wars
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| Thoughts From Kansas | Blogger | Weblog of a University of Kansas ecology and evolutionary biology student, fighting for progressive politics, evolution, and endangered species.
Thoughts from Kansas You will notice that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that |
| Expelled steals from the dead | | Expelled apparently features "Imagine" by John Lennon , and the Lennon estate is not pleased.
But according to a lawyer for Ms. Ono, the filmmakers did not have permission to use the song [Imagine], for any amount of money.
Ms. Ono's [..] Read complete article | | Published 17-Apr-2008 by Thoughts in Culture Wars
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| Thoughts From Kansas | Blogger | Weblog of a University of Kansas ecology and evolutionary biology student, fighting for progressive politics, evolution, and endangered species.
Thoughts from Kansas You will notice that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that |
| Thoughts From Kansas | Blogger | Weblog of a University of Kansas ecology and evolutionary biology student, fighting for progressive politics, evolution, and endangered species.
Thoughts from Kansas You will notice that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that |
| Expelled on DVD, straight from Mumbai! | | According to a press release datelined from Mumbai, the crapfest Expelled will be distributed on DVD by Vivendi Entertainment, proud home of many classic films. If you want reruns of Swamp Thing or McHale's Navy, you always knew Vivendi Entertainment was the place to go. But did you know they've got such modern classics as:
LITTLE JJ'S ALMOST GROWN VARIETY SHOW
A [..] Read complete article | | Published 02-Jul-2008 by Thoughts in Creationism
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| Thoughts From Kansas | Blogger | Weblog of a University of Kansas ecology and evolutionary biology student, fighting for progressive politics, evolution, and endangered species.
Thoughts from Kansas You will notice that it lacks definiteness; that it lacks purpose; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about; that it is loose and wabbly; that it wanders around; that |
| New NCSE video | | The video at ExpelledExposed.com highlighting Chris Comer's story was one of last week's most viewed and most discussed on YouTube. In a week, it basically tied the YouTube trailer for Expelled, and exceeded the viewership of the Dick-to-the-Dawk viral video put out by the producers of Expelled.
We don't know if the next three videos we're rolling out over the next few weeks will get t [..] Read complete article | | Published 24-Apr-2008 by Thoughts in Creationism
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| Kotaku`s The Gamers Guide | Blogger | XBOX 360 Gamers Weblog
Gossip, news and leaks for obsessive gamers Kotaku As if you don't waste enough of your time in a gamer's haze, here's Kotaku: a gamer's guide that goes beyond the press release. Gossip, cheats, criticism, design, nostalgia, pred |
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